He recreated a surrealist poetic style that is revered by generations of readers. A parallel can be established with the work of Fernando Pessoa.
It's bitter the heart of a poem.
The left hand unleashes a star,
beneath the other hand
White moves in a pond. Open wounds,
reopen, stitch by the night, re-sews them
With incandescent lines. Bitter. The blood never stops
from salt hand to hand, between the eyes,
alveolus of the mouth.
The blood that moves in the magnifying voices
the dark behind things,
halos in the images of filings, the rough places
you write
between the meteors. Sew you: shines
in the scars. Only the hand moves
on top and the other white hand
works
on surfaces centrifuges. Bitter, bitter. In blood and exercise
of barbaric elegance. Until sitting in the middle
black of the work you die
of compact light.
In radiation helium you explode by shadow
violence
of the crazy nucleus of the soul.
Everything I know about Herberto Helder summed up of the stories that circulate all over the country of his self-isolation, his irascible character prone to all forms of public recognition for his work, not to mention the awards and honors denied that never happened, which creates a series of urban myths around his mysterious personality. I know because I was told that this poet loved by so many that you lose the account, refused to reissue some of his books of poems for no apparent reason, indifferent to the many pleas made by publishers, bookstore owners, friends and readers, because as you know his books in our country, are always sold out. They are gems. Like diamonds, pure and rare. The other story I am about to tell you is not mine, I borrow it, from a friend, a young man who undertook a personal investigation as the whereabouts of the writer, with only one goal to personally professed his admiration and devotion. The search took him to a cafe in Oeiras, where he waited patiently day after day, for a glimpse of his favorite poet, his idol. Due to bad luck, or simply bad information, with him he never crossed, but his poetry still prevails. The last is mine, a future legend, happened at a literary conference which I attended, where the journalist and writer Ines Pedrosa attributes this almost anti-social characteristic of this to insularity, a result of the island isolation which Herberto Helder likes so much is not the only case, because as she said another writer of Madera said that she also avoids public buzz because it disturbs the writing. Maybe that is the point. The important thing is not the messenger is the message. The recreated words. It is the echo of phrases that alert the senses, which exhorts the most beautiful and profound emotions in humans. It is written by Herberto Helder. I say no more, the poetry speaks by itself.
